Computing/Biology to Dwarf Internet Era
By Lucas van Grinsven and Ben Hirschler
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The marriage of biology and microelectronics that may cure diseases and create designer babies will create trillions of dollars of new wealth.
Scientists at the World Economic Forum (news - web sites) here have little doubt that nanotechnology, genomics and robotics are going to be the hot technology growth areas in the years to come, but many are also unnerved about its impact on society.
The reason is last year's mapping of human genome, the genetic ``recipe book'' which scientists have now broken down into a digital code of 3.1 billion chemical bases.
Code in a computer, rather than tissue under a microscope, had dramatically changed the way we should look at biology, said Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, one of the world's leading computer makers.
``It is symbolic that the code of the human genome has been broken in the year 2000. It has made biology an information science,'' he said.
``The 21st century is going to be the real information age, and I don't mean the Internet,'' Joy added.
He predicted the value these new technologies will create is going to dwarf the Internet era, once dubbed by venture capitalist John Doerr as the greatest legal creation of wealth in the history of mankind.
``The upside is enormous,'' Joy said. ``Over the cause of the next century it can create $1,000 trillion of new wealth.''
Shopping For Babies
The mapping of the genome has thrown up a myriad of new possibilities in tackling the root cause of diseases, notably cancer, and genetic scientists believe engineering the genes of individuals will soon be within reach.
George Church, director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites), said clinicians may soon be able to sequence the genomes of individuals, launching the age or truly personalized medicine.
``It's not out of the question that we could have a technology for sequencing our individual genomes in the not too distant future,'' he said.
But there are ethical dilemmas too.
Confronted with the question of whether they would want to map out the genome of their unborn and eliminate ``faulty'' genes, a group of politicians, scientists, computer engineers and entrepreneurs in the fringes of the meeting were split 50:50.
But Jeremy Rifkin, president of the U.S.-based Foundation on Economic Trends, had no doubt all of them would jump on the opportunity when it presented itself.
``I guarantee you that everyone will want that map...A child will become the ultimate shopping experience in post modern life,'' he said.
New Cancer Cures
Richard Klausner, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (news - web sites), said there was a huge potential for an improvement in treatment with the first fruits of genomic research coming in new ways to differentiate between dozens of different cancers.
Biotechnology firms in 2001 will also focus increasingly on the body's capacity to cure itself, using stem cells and other techniques. Stem cells are immature ``master'' cells which can be coaxed into forming virtually any type of tissue in the body.
``The era of using cells in this way is just beginning,'' said Irving Weissman, professor of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and founder of StemCells Inc.
His team have already successfully isolated blood-forming stem cells and reintroduced them into adult cancer patients to restore bone marrow destroyed by radiation therapy.
Wet Molecules Vs Dry Molecules
But breakthrough developments are not just coming from genetics, where people tinker with the so-called wet molecules, that are alive. Now scientists also work to create dry molecules.
For scientists to create a dry molecule, they use nanotechnology to manipulate atoms and thus design circuitry to forge ``intelligent'' molecules.
Xerox labs is developing something called digital clay, matter that shape and organize itself, said John Seely Brown, chief scientist at Xerox Corp.
As he showed a small brown cube between his thumb and index finger he said: ``Our aim is to make these as small as a grain of sand. Eventually they could become dry molecules.''
With computing power doubling every 18 months, semiconductors should become a million times more powerful in 30 years time. Tiny molecules can one day be smart enough to arrange themselves, and their surroundings.
``Ten years ago Nicholas Negroponte said we would move from a world of atoms to a world of bits, but now we're moving back to a marriage of atoms and bits,'' Seely Brown said.
Nathan Lewis, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology said that the real impact of genomics is that it will tell you what body proteins are doing at present so that an individual does not have to wait for a fever to tell him he is sick.
``Another possibility is self-organizing materials. Implants that interact with their environment and which will adapt perfectly to the stress situations in a body and will fit perfectly,'' he said.
Paul Saffo, director of the U.S. Institute for the Future, is amazed at the way biotechnology and microelectronics have found each other.
``The biggest surprise is perhaps that we are at the intersection of the two,'' he said. |
